True story: last week as I arrived at school pick-up, my son looked up at me with those big eyes of his and sheepishly told me that he couldn’t find his glasses. It took all I had not to completely freak out, I’m not gonna lie. His glasses are extremely important, of course (not to mention expensive!), and the last thing I wanted to do on this warm afternoon was go looking for them.

*Sigh*

We started retracing his steps to SEARCH the school, but then something went horribly wrong.

During our first loop around the hallways outside his classroom, one of the school workers we knew ran by us and said a girl was missing, the little sister of a boy in first grade. She was only 4 years old, she said. “Have you seen her go by?” Suddenly my son’s glasses were completely forgotten and we joined the SEARCH for little Olivia. Ian knew the boy and his sister and remembered he had seen her in the hallway running by right when school let out, but by now no one had seen her for almost 20 minutes. The panic in the air was palpable as we started looking and I saw all of the principals, teachers, school workers and parents on the school grounds SEARCHING, too. Kids old enough to look were combing the area in pairs and threesomes or trailing behind their parents as the entire school community dropped everything and came together to find this little girl.

All you could hear was the calling of, “Olivia!” as we SEARCHED every corner of the school building and walked the grounds.

The happy ending is that our kindergarten teacher ended up finding Olivia tucked in between the bushes and the school building right next to the playground, afraid to come out even though she heard everyone calling her. She thought she’d be in trouble for running away and hiding. The relief that spread across our schoolyard was immense as we watched her mom pull Olivia into the tightest embrace that didn’t seem to end. Once my own maternal heartbeat returned to normal, I felt so proud to have witnessed our little elementary school community stopping everything and coming together to SEARCH for Olivia.

And I took the opportunity to sit down with Ian and discuss how great it is to have everyone at school help us, and how we can always count on our community here. And I pulled him onto my lap and hugged him so tight he sputtered for air.